


Melomania

by Syntax



Series: Writings of Xarxes [7]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Experimental Style, F/M, Lowercase, aka miraak gets busted out of apocrypha, crossposted from tumblr: thespleenoflorkhan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21614203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: she did not love him.  she barely knew him.she wanted to know more.
Relationships: Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Miraak
Series: Writings of Xarxes [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1284701
Kudos: 20





	Melomania

**Author's Note:**

> i still like this one even if it is kind of pretentious

miraak and alta did not fall in love.

being in love just kind of. happened.

alta did not have any major issues with miraak. at the least, none that she wasn’t willing to talk to him about. while his actions in his quest to return to solstheim were objectively _not okay_ , she could understand that desperation can drive a man to do many things, and that what one is _willing_ to do isn’t automatically what they _regularly_ do.

she considered him to be an interesting conversational partner in those days and weeks when the two were recovering from wounds sustained in Apocrypha. she considered him a potentially world-changing reference for what life in the late merethic era was like. she did not love him. she barely knew him. she wanted to know more.

miraak did have the one major issue with alta: by not only defeating him, but by accomplishing that which he had not, she had showed dominance over him, and while there was a part of his dragon soul that was willing to accept that he had been bested, there was a large amount of his human pride that rankled and hissed every time he remembered it.

he wanted, initially, to learn her strengths and weaknesses, and challenge her to a fight when they both were well, to see if a different outcome could be had, to see if he could recover his lost pride, his lost dominance over all of dragonkind. he wanted a fight. he got a fight. but alta was very clearly still weakened from the mix of care and bed rest that she’d needed after escaping apocrypha (that she’d needed after _saving him_ from apocrypha) that the win did very little for his soul and his pride.

beyond that… she didn’t mind the loss. “physical therapy” the healer had called it. their fights—their spars, eventually—helped her to recover. helped him grow stronger. helped them grow closer. they fought not because they were two dragons vying for control, but two men easing the best out of each other. they were not in love. but they were growing closer all the same.

alta spoke to him about what he remembered and miraak asked her about what she knew. he learned of the present, she learned of the past. they found a common ground in the petty squabbles of men, the delegations and rules and customs that could all be done away with if you just say what you mean and fight when you want to. she tells him of the meeting at high hrothgar and laughs at his frustration. he tells her of the councils in bromjunaar and she cries at how people never learn.

they talk. they fight. they banter, and joke, and make fun of each other and the relative strangeness of their ways. she takes him to the bards’ college. she takes him to the mages’ college. she takes him to labyrinthian. he shows her the world through ancient eyes, and their understanding of the land around them and the forces that run through it grow.

she writes him a song. an edda. the story of his life, in all major points, laid out in verse for the world to remember, for the world to see. she has done what he could not. he is the first to ever hear his story sung back to him, and neither his pride nor his soul will not allow this to go unanswered. she has given him a new song with a forgotten story. and without thinking, he gives her an old song with a forgotten melody.

they sing to each other, a song of a dragonborn, four eras apart and four feet away, to meet in the center with something new. they finish. they understand. they embrace.

they are in love.


End file.
